


Mirror

by athena_crikey



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Episode Related, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-28
Updated: 2014-04-28
Packaged: 2018-01-21 02:30:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1534313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athena_crikey/pseuds/athena_crikey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Morse dreams. Post Neverland.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Morse's subconscious is not currently a pleasant place to be.

There’s a red river running underground. It crashes, furious and swollen in its bed, so loudly Morse can hardly hear himself think. The water smells of saltpeter, of iron, of salt, and when it splashes on his face it is warm and familiar as breathing.

There are hands, overgrown with cracked orange rust. It’s in the lines of the palms, beneath the nails, smeared across the knuckles and on down the backs, careless, indiscriminate. As Morse watches, time unfurls backwards like a sail. Moisture returns and rust turns red. It thickens, becoming a film: viscous, dripping. 

Words echo from somewhere far in the distance; over the roaring water he can barely make them out.

“ _Stay with me, sir! Stay with me! Sir?_ ”

“ _Morse? Morse! Don’t move, lad._ ”

A body lies writhing – no, still – in the wet earth and the red hands are there too. He can feel them pressed tight over the jagged nest of pain: warm, firm, their assuredness the sole candle holding back the darkness of his fear. This is his pain, his blood, his hollowness. But the hands are his too – he can feel the raw wound under his palms. Wet, hot at the centre yet already cooling at the edges as the heat fades – like life, it flows free and fleeting. 

There’s somewhere he needs to go, something he needs to do; he pulls himself up to his feet and presses on. The urgency drives him forwards and he limps on over the unsteady floor, wooden boards creaking beneath his feet. His hip is aching – when he puts his hand to it he finds his trouser pocket stuffed full of verse – the type of poetry he first took to reading at grammar school to needle Gwen. He lets the onion-skin pages fall and they float away on the breeze, whispering soft words to each other. 

Somewhere in the dark halls, a boy is crying. How he knows the child is a boy, he can’t say, but he’s sure of it. It’s far away, muffled, almost out of earshot, but there’s a hopelessness, a forlornness to the sobbing that disturbs him. He tries to move faster, but he feels wet warmth and looks down to see his trouser leg stained red, bright and dripping. The horror rises first, then the nausea, and then he shuts his eyes firmly and lays one arm flat against the wall – _keep moving._

There’s a door at the end of the hallway, white, brass knob. The pain in his hip kicks in about three yards from the door and he staggers those final steps, shoulder against the wall for the limited support it can offer. The crying is growing louder, closer, and he reaches out to open the door. 

DeBryn’s morgue is cold, and dark, and silent. Only the faint light of dawn is filtering in through the windows, illuminating two loaded steel gurneys in the centre of the room. The ground under their wheels is dusty gravel, weeds beginning to creep up here and there. 

Morse stands in the entranceway, frozen. The bodies are both draped, as of yet anonymous. The silhouettes reveal only that they are both adults, large, male. 

He reaches up to wipe a bead of sweat from his forehead, and realises he’s shaking. Not just his hand; the whole of him is trembling. He takes a step back, presses his shoulders up against the solid steel doors behind him. 

Somehow, he knows the people under these sheets. Knows them well. More than anything else, he doesn’t want to see them revealed. _Can’t._

Morse reaches behind him slowly, as though afraid of attracting attention, and feels for the door handle. He does it fluidly at first, then more frantically.

There isn’t one.

His breath is coming in quick, short gasps, now. He tries to slow it, tries to suck air in deep and hold it, but his heart is hammering against his lungs and the lack of oxygen makes his head spin. He is trying to remain calm, but he cannot stay here. Every second he stays here is one step closer to finding out who is lying on those tables, and he _cannot know that._

Hands pressed against the wall behind him, Morse circles the room’s periphery at a careful limp aiming for the windows on the far side, his shoes crunching on the gravel. He keeps his eyes on the ground, refuses to look at the gurneys. He makes it to the ledge, actually climbs up onto the counter and presses his hands against the glass, it’s cold and smooth against his skin. 

The minute he touches the window, he knows he won’t make it any farther. 

Behind him, the lights in the morgue switch on, bright overhead bulbs beating down on stainless steel and gravel. The room isn’t silent anymore – the lights hum like a hornet’s nest, their filaments blazing with the thousands of watts pouring through them.

Morse closes his eyes for a moment, lips pressed tightly together, then lowers his hands from the window. He forces himself to turn around, twists his neck stiffly to look over his shoulder, hands fisted. The sheets are gone. Lying there pale and still, already bearing the Y-shaped autopsy incision scars, are the two corpses. 

His father and Fred Thursday. 

Morse stares for a moment, then spins around and slams his fists into the window. “ _NO!_ ”

\---------------------------------------------

Morse startles awake with his cry ringing in his ears, gasping for breath. His shirt is stuck to his back with sweat, and his hip is aching – this is, he finds, because his right hand has clawed into it in his sleep. 

Something metallic clangs against the bars, punctuated by a gruff, “Quiet down in there!”

Morse shoves himself up onto an elbow, then swings himself out of the cot onto his stocking feet. On the other side of the bars, the duty sergeant watches impassively. 

“Inspector Thursday – is there any news?”

“What?”

“DI Thursday – from Cowley Station. He was taken to hospital; is there any news of his condition?”

The man snorts. “Think I’d tell you? You just keep your head down and your mouth shut, and if you’re lucky the keys to that cell won’t wander off. Takes a right piece of shit to stab one of his own in the back, and some of the lads here don’t take kindly to slime in the cells.”

“I _didn’t_ –” begins Morse, furious, but the man is already walking away. 

Morse sinks down onto his bunk. Gradually, thoughtlessly, like a seedling crumpling for lack of water, he curls inwards, head falling into his hands. He knots his fingers in his hair, twists until it hurts, and harder. 

Eventually he lies down with his back to the bars, drawing his legs up high until his knees are pressed against the cold stone wall. When the tears come, he lets them soak into the pillow. _Past touch, and sight, and sound_ , the dark recesses of his mind provide, unasked. With a snarl Morse wrenches the pillow away, flings it clean across the cell and buries his face against his arm. 

He doesn’t sleep again that night.

END


End file.
